


stars, sky, and the suns we orbit

by orphan_account



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fix-It, Fluff, M/M, hux is having none of this self-sacrificing shit today, im trash who loves happy endings, in which kylo ren just REALLY wants to follow in his grandfather's footsteps, including the redemption bit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 12:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5928162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wouldn’t be that stupid, not even Kylo fucking Ren is-</p>
<p>“-I am carrying on in his footsteps! Now, after sparing my loved ones and their pesky friends, I will destroy the Emperor myself!” Ren continues triumphantly.</p>
<p>Okay. He is that stupid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stars, sky, and the suns we orbit

**Author's Note:**

> hi im trash and also i can't stand dysfunctional families, which means this ship is probably Not For Me
> 
> this fic is also trash and im sorry

“He’s going to kill you, you know,” Hux says in his crisp accent. Ren’s too busy calculating the amount of black fabric it’s going to take to make up for all the outfits he lost in the explosion to listen, but he does make a sort of assenting noise, so Hux figures it’s not a total loss. “Are you listening, laserbrain? You failed. You know how well the Supreme Leader deals with failure.”

 

Ren laughs. It sounds a little like nails on a blackboard and a lot like a squeaky hinge. “ _I_ failed? May I remind you who had command of the base?” He’s a lot less intimidating without the weird Darth Vader Memorial Mask; his face is thin and wan, his hair a bird’s nest. It offends Hux on a personal level. “This is on _you,_ General, and you know what they say: the higher you are, the harder you fall.”

 

“It’s the _bigger_ you are, the harder you fall, idiot, and I wasn’t talking about that. I was talking about the _Light_.”

 

Ren blanches. It’s an interesting reaction on someone who’s paler than the driven snow, and this coming from _Hux_.

 

“That’s right,” Hux snarls. “Your father was left _alive_ , after express orders that you were to kill anyone who stood in our way. Not to mention that you let the girl and the traitor get away without a fight- tell me, do you think the Supreme Leader doesn’t know? _I_ know, and I don’t have the advantage of that all seeing power of yours!”

 

“No, you just have bugs everywhere,” Ren snarks back, but it’s weak. Hux can see he’s running scared; for once he might even had forgotten that Force-damned grandfather of his. “And anyway, this is all part of my plan.”

 

Hux is flabbergasted. He is. It’s not often that he uses words that sound too made-up to be real Basic, but here he is, flabbergasted to all hell. “What do you mean, _you planned this_?”

 

“Do you know the legend of Darth Vader, Hux?” Okay, so he hasn’t forgotten about the grandfather. Hux isn’t surprised.

 

“Yes,” he answers with a steely glare. “He was the Emperor’s right hand man, but he was too weak, and succumbed to his son in the final battle.”

 

Ren looks smug. Hux hates it. If he had the temperament of Ren, he would be hitting something with a lightsaber, but he isn’t a child throwing a tantrum, so he sits back and seethes instead. “Is that what they teach you in Imperial school?” asks Ren superiorly. “No. He was a great Jedi, but made a noble sacrifice to save his wife and children, becoming the Emperor's right hand man, until his son convinced him to throw off the yoke of the Dark Side. He killed the Emperor himself, but not before the Emperor delivered a fatal blow back.”

 

No.

 

“He made a noble sacrifice to save the ones he loved!”

 

Oh no.

 

“Now, after all these years-”

 

He wouldn’t be that stupid, not even _Kylo fucking Ren_ is-

 

“-I am carrying on in his footsteps! Now, after sparing my loved ones and their pesky friends, I will destroy the Emperor myself!” Ren continues triumphantly.

 

Okay. He is that stupid.

 

Hux clenches his fists. This is the man he has chosen to follow? What an idiot he has been, to think for one second that Kylo Ren would be any more than the child he had seen cowering behind the Supreme Leader’s skirts at their first meeting. Why has he ever thought that Ren could be in any way a competent leader, a worthy successor to the Empire?

 

Hux does not make a habit of lying to himself, though, and he knows in the depths of his blackened heart that this has never been the reason he followed Kylo Ren. He has never seen the leader, only the boy curled in pain as the Dark Side was forced into him- for as long as he has known Ren, there has been the urge to keep him in sight, to make sure that he is not going to die.

 

Even when he has hated the Supreme Leader’s protegé, he has loved him.

 

This is what makes his mind up for him. Even if Ren insists on persisting in this delusion that everything will be “all right”, Hux knows that he is nowhere near powerful enough to take on the Emperor by himself, and Force knows Hux isn’t going to do it for him. He would die as soon as he voiced his intentions like the pretentious drama queen he is, and that is something Hux can’t have, even if he never says that to his face.

 

He has to get him out of here. His mind whirrs through multiple plans, but he knows that the only ones that will work are the ones that have Hux taking the fall for him; bearing the brunt of the Emperor’s anger himself. Unfortunately, it will have to do; he is strong enough to withstand it for enough time to get Ren back to the Resistance base and his fool parents, and after that, the cards will fall as they may.

 

“Get up,” he says harshly to Ren. Coddling won’t work, it never does. The only way to get Ren to do something is look really, really scary when you tell him to. It’s why Phasma has so much luck.

 

Ren is slow to follow orders, and there is much groaning and carry-on, but Hux just grabs him by the collar and marches him to the escape pod before shoving him in and programming it for somewhere in the general vicinity of the Resistance base. They’ll pick him up. The Resistance is a mess, but they’re a mess with good sensors.

 

Ren is banging on the door and yelling, but escape pods are not made for getting out of after the fact, so he just looks like a temper-tantrum-having twerp all the way out the airlock. Hux thinks it’s fitting for their last goodbye. It really sums up their relationship.

 

***

 

The Force presses him to his knees.

 

“YOU LET REN ESCAPE?” yells the Supreme Leader. Hux can really see where Ren got his anger issues from. “YOUR INCOMPETENCE HAS COST YOU YOUR LIFE!” He’s more worried about Ren than about the fact that Hux is the only scapegoat for the Starkiller disaster. Nice to see the man’s got priorities, thinks Hux as he’s led away.

 

The stormtroopers are ones from his own command, but they are not gentle with him. It’s just a taste of what he can expect from the coming days.

 

***

 

Pain.

 

There is nothing but pain, fire coursing through his veins. _It can all go away_ , a voice whispers in his mind. _Tell me what happened to Ren, and I’ll stop it_.

 

It only makes Hux clench his teeth and hang on harder. There is no way he’ll give this away. If there’s one good thing he’ll do in this life, let it be this.

 

A fresh wave of pain couses over him, and he screams.

 

***

He gets out because of incompetence. Someone leaves the door unlocked by accident, and it is simple enough to get out of the cuffs if you know how they work. He leaves no trace of himself behind, wipes up the blood and enters his information in the databanks as having died of his injuries; no one will question it. There are too many people coming and going.

 

A ship is less easy to steal, but he manages it. He was not made General for nothing, and even though he’s a shitty pilot he knows enough to get out of First Order space undetected, before heading for the Outer Rim planets where it will be easy to slip by. He stays to recuperate for a while, before selling the ship and buying a new one with the credits. He’s not stupid. He knows there’s a tracer somewhere.

 

He can’t go to the Resistance. Ren was different, he grew up there, he’s still their son. Hux is an unknown, they won’t let him live- at least, he wouldn’t if it were the other way around.

 

For a while he goes around sabotaging First Order bases, but it gets boring after a while. They’re like rats, they always come back, and one man isn’t enough to do the job. It’s a miracle that he’s lasted this long anyway; he knows himself well enough to know that there’s a pattern in what he does, always a routine, even if he himself doesn’t realise it. He thinks that the First Order should have figured it out by then, but apparently they’re stupider than they look.

 

It’s on Tatooine that it happens. He’s not even there to scout out for any base- not that anyone would be stupid enough to put a base on such a Force-damned planet- but they find him anyway, come at him blasters blazing, too much firepower for one man. He doesn't stay to engage, gets the hell out as quick as he can, but it seems they’ve gotten to his ship as well, lying in wait. He doesn’t know what to do for the first time in his life, doesn’t have a plan-

 

“Get down!” someone yells, and he moves on instinct. Blasters fire above him as he takes shelter behind some crates, and Resistance fighters come out of nowhere. They’ve got full artillery, and somewhere in his hindbrain it registers that they must be here to take down the base that he’d dismissed as impossible, but his attention is taken up by the figure leading the battle.

 

He’s tanner, his face fuller and looking less malnourished, but it’s unmistakably _Ren_. He’s not in his weird Sith gear anymore, but wearing what Hux thinks must be his father’s old clothes- they have the same look to them, anyway. But what gets Hux the most is the _smile_ \- it’s breathtaking. It hits Hux then that this is Kylo Ren truly happy, which he doesn’t think he’s ever seen before. It’s humbling.

 

The battle is over quickly, and Hux scrambles to get up before anyone tries to help him with a misplaced sense of heroism. Sure enough, Ren is making his way over with his hand out, but even when Hux is up he doesn’t withdraw it, just draws him into a bone crushing hug.

 

“What are you doing, Ren,” growls Hux, but the kid merely laughs. It doesn’t sound like a squeaky hinge anymore, but like something that might come out of an actual functional human being.

 

“Thank you,” Ren whispers in his ear, before stepping back. This time, when he gives a cocky grin, it doesn’t grate on Hux’s nerves; in fact, he feels warmed by it, somewhere in his cold heart. it’s a new sensation, really.

 

“By the way,” says the kid, “call me Ben.”

Hux narrows his eyes. “So you’ve gone back?”

 

“Don’t pretend that this wasn’t your plan all along.” Hux was wrong, he’s just as irritating as ever.

 

“I didn’t plan on you rescuing me from an entire battalion of stormtroopers, no,” says Hux. He can’t believe that he fell- well, he doesn’t want to say _in love_ , and Force knows he’ll never say it aloud, but it is what it is- with this dork. Although he can’t say that they’re the same person at all, his reactions to him haven’t changed.

 

“It wasn’t a battalion,” said Ben obstinately. “And you know I can’t get the girl without saving her first. Or the boy, in this case.”

 

“What are you talking about, Solo?” grumbles Hux, like he doesn’t know full well what this is about. In response, Ben plants a hand on his back and start to lower him down like the little shit he is.

 

“No,” says Hux, a touch of panic in his voice. “No, you are _not_ dipping me, Ben, d’you hear, don’t you dare-”

  
It’s too late. Ben kisses him in full view of the Resistance fighters, many of whom find it appropriate to _cheer_ and _clap,_ and while Hux enjoys the kiss, he starts planning his revenge in that moment.


End file.
